Three-point editing and more

You may not have considered it, but most edits are defined in terms of the source clip (which part of a clip you want to use) rather than the timeline (where you want the clip to go). However, it’s possible to prioritize the timeline instead, and this is sometimes called “three-point editing” because technically, at least three points are defined every time you add a clip. It’s a traditional method, and here, you’ll learn about how to mark part of the timeline to receive a clip and how to connect or overwrite a clip to that region.

So far, we’ve added connected clips in a somewhat haphazard, less controlled way by selecting a few seconds of a clip and then pressing Q. That means that the three points are the In (1) and Out (2) on a Browser clip, plus an In (3) point on the timeline.

But you can flip that “source clip dominance” around by explicitly placing two of those points on the timeline...